This year's crop of graduates from the UK's design schools is an international bunach. Coming from as far as Japan, Sweden and Greece, it's a testament to the UK's continued international appeal to emerging designers. Their projects are thought-provoking, innovative and sometimes just beautiful. We picked our favourites for this roundup.

Tortie HoareBucks New University,BA Furniture Design and Craftsmanship Desk, keystand and stoolTortie Hoare won the coveted accolade of the New Designer of the Year award for her boiled leather and wood furniture back in July. It's a technique that we have recently seen Simon Hasan perfect, but Hoare came upon the idea by looking at the way in which old French armour was made. All of the pieces start with a jig, which the leather fits on to. It is then boiled and when "frozen" with water retains its shape and becomes solid. Hoare then builds the wood to fit around the leather.

Seongyong LeeRCA, MA Design ProductsPlytubeEven if Seongyong Lee's pieces are very appealing in their simplicity, it is the material – tubes made out of thin layers of wood – that is the real achievement of his work. "It's about making a lightweight yet strong material," says Lee. "It's a bit like industrialising bamboo, and the process of making it is similar to how you produce a paper tube." The furniture Lee has produced shows the material's flexibility and sturdiness. It is exactly this kind of innovation that makes graduate shows so appealing. You can look at his work up close at the Saatchi Gallery during the London Design Festival.

David AmarRCA, MA Design ProductsRaymondNamed after Raymond Queneau, the founder of the literary movement OuLiPo and author of one of Amar's favourite books, this table is an ad hoc piece of furniture that is assembled by slotting a cast aluminium leg with a loop on top on to layers of scrap wood. "The idea was for me to come up with a tool that enabled me to write or compose an object, so I created this unit that also works as a locking mechanism," says Amar.His work will be shown at the Homework exhibition at Mint in September and a new venture at the RCA called the Design Products Collection will put the table in its debut collection.

Harry ThalerRCA, MA Design ProductsPressed chair"It started with a flat sheet of aluminium that I wanted to make 3D," says Harry Thaler. Now he can make two stools and one chair out of a one square metre sheet of metal and, when bent into shape (by a machine), it is strong enough to sit on, resulting in this fragile-looking chair. It won him the Conran prize and he is currently speaking to a manufacturer about putting it into production.

Nicola ZoccaRCA, MA Design ProductsShrink seriesThere is something very attractive about Nicola Zocca's wood and powder-coated metal sheets assembled with rubber bands. "It makes the perfect flatpack and doesn't need any screws or nails. Instead you slot the piece together and slot the rubber band around its joints and shrink it to fit with hot air," says Zocca, who is already improving on it by producing a lighter version in aluminium.

"There's a saying in our trade: the better the idea, the more unlikely it will see the light of day," says Sam Hecht, partner of design studio Industrial Facility. For every design that manages to pass the many hurdles of evolution, testing and approval and finally make it out into the world, there are scores of products that didn't get that far. Designers do a vast amount of work that never materialises and, like fishermen, they can be at their most wistful talking about the "ones that got away" – the brilliant product for the household brand that was thwarted at the last minute.

But if it didn't make it, it can't have been all that brilliant, right? Sometimes, but not always. The things that don't get made tell you almost as much about the way the design world works as the things that do get made. A design can be killed by risk aversion, infighting, corporate intrigue, refusal to experiment, sudden shifts in the market, business failure or – in the case of at least one product here – the mystifying failure of one branch of a business to talk to another. Sometimes – surprisingly often – the axe falls at the very last moment, when thousands of units of a product have already been made. And sometimes the company never intends to make the product – it just uses the prototype, which the designer developed for nothing, to add a bit of glamour to its collection and generate press interest.

What we have gathered here is a glimpse into this fascinating parallel universe of design – the things we could be living with now, but aren't. It's only a tiny glimpse, the tip of the iceberg. We can tell you that there are hundreds of products out there, ready to go but hidden, a lost world of stuff like the mysterious warehouse seen at the end of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

So why can't we show you more? Believe us, we tried. But this parallel universe is surrounded by an extraordinary culture of secrecy. Time and again, we asked to show products we knew existed (wouldn't you like to see Ettore Sottsass' tablet computer for Apple?), and were met with a flat refusal. Sometimes, this emanates from the companies that commission and then quash the designs. A picture of Industrial Facility's cancelled portable projector for Epson – imagine a Muji CD player that shows movies – used to appear on the studio's website. It attracted a continuous stream of queries from people wanting to buy it. You'd think that would please Epson, but instead the corporation asked for the picture to be taken down. The reasoning behind decisions like this is generally inscrutable – no doubt companies feel their omni-confident mystique is threatened by showing their rejects.

Sometimes, though, it's the designers who don't want to show their nearly-stuff. These ideas are like a creative bank account for designers. They still have high hopes for these products, which can be recycled for other clients. To publish unrealised work is to let go of an idea and run the risk of another designer picking it up. All they have to do is change the shape or a detail and take it to another manufacturer. The hidden parallel universe is a storehouse of treasure – it's fascinating just to peer around the door.

Yves BéharTylenol bottle"This Tylenol bottle was a four-year-long project – we started working with Johnson & Johnson and Tylenol on really creating a different experience for a pill bottle, one that was better adapted to the kinds of users that use these products. Over the years these bottles have been designed for child safety, for good reasons, but at the same time they've become increasingly difficult for people to use, especially people with arthritis and older folks. We were trying to deliver something that's easy to use but hard for a child to figure out. Also, we wanted to put these bottles on the shelf without the cardboard box. All these bottles are displayed with cardboard packaging, and I don't think that's necessary.

It has a little button at the top, and you have to squeeze the sides at the same time. The function is to activate two things at the same time, but it's quite easy to do it in the palm of your hand. The bottle opens, and then when you turn it around, it's more of a spout, dispensing one or two pills at a time rather than a whole lot flooding out all at once.

Why didn't it make it? Tylenol is a very, very large brand – you're talking about millions of pills being made every day. To change from the existing containers to the new ones requires building new facilities, and building very expensive tools and systems. In the end, even though everyone wanted this project to happen, and everyone was aware of the cost, and we kept in line with the manufacturing costs that the company expected, it was one of the big projects that year that needed funding and just didn't make it. It was unfortunate, but the interesting thing is that Tylenol was still very proud of the work and told us that we could show this in a MOMA exhibition, Safe. And I don't think it's entirely dead yet – it just hit a funding glitch."Yves Behar speaking to William Wiles

Inga SempéLight for Luceplan"I produced this light with funding from VIA, but as I had already worked with Luceplan I showed them the project. They liked it and the creative director was sometimes convinced and sometimes not that it would work. It was supposed to be shown at Euroluce in Milan 2009 but then in February, a couple of months before Milan, they changed their minds.

The prototype was made from pressed glass in a wooden mould, then it was metallised on the upper part. The point is that there is a mechanism that shields the bulb and the light shows through either at the top of the shade or the bottom through the glass, depending on what position you put the dial in.

It's very difficult to produce a huge piece of glass with a metallised section like this one has, so it couldn't quite fit the aim of perfection that we are used to in industrial production. Finally, Luceplan only showed one more project that year, while Artemide and Flos showed over 20 new lamps."Inga Sempé speaking to Johanna Agerman

5.5 DesignersSave a Product"A French glass manufacturer commissioned us to design a dining collection in plastic. So we designed a complete range of products – it must have taken almost two years in total. They were going to launch the range at the Frankfurt fair, but only three or four days before the launch they decided to withdraw the product. We still don't understand why. They said to us that it was to do with internal restructuring, and that they had changed their mind about producing plasticware as they were known for their glass manufacturing.

The only problem was that 45,000 units had already been made – about nine large truckloads.

Then we received a letter a year later asking us to consult them on the destruction of the entire range. It came as a huge surprise. We then realised that they couldn't destroy it without our permission so we started negotiating to take the stock instead.

Now we call the project Save a Product instead, and we travel to design fairs around the world selling the wares for €1 apiece. In fact we did our last sale in Toulouse last week but we still have a few pieces left. The main point of the project is not the product but the story. It's funny because now the French state design collection – the Fonds national d'art contemporain (Fnac) – has bought a set too, so something that was about to be destroyed is part of a permanent design collection."Anthony LebossÉ speaking to Johanna Agerman

Sebastian BergneStackable champagne glass for Driade"The idea was to do a champagne glass for Driade for its millennium party. I thought that it would be nice if the glass could change the mood of the party and if you could carry around the glasses in piles rather than on trays, so I made it stackable. In fact champagne glasses traditionally used to be tall beakers.

The glass itself is bubbly so that it has a relationship to the content. I think the samples were made in Eastern Europe or maybe even India, but Driade was not happy with the quality of the glass. It was made up of a lot of small bubbles that made the glass look frosty.

Because we didn't have direct insight into this process, the project was delayed and then it was too late to produce anything in time for the New Year's Eve party. At the time I was slightly pissed off, I just wanted to make them. But the number of products that never make it into production is huge. You go through so much work to get a product made and then for really stupid and really small reasons it doesn't happen, but you get resilient.

I managed to get these two prototypes of the glasses and I use them at home with my wife sometimes. As far as I know they are the only two in existence."Sebastian Bergne speaking to Johanna Agerman

Sottsass AssociatiDisposable camera for Agfa"Back in 1998, Agfa was trying to work out ways of improving sales of their film. Obviously it was the moment when digital cameras were emerging but they weren't all that good. So Agfa thought, if we design a really nice disposable camera, a really nice object with our film inside, people will buy it.

They had a competition with some leading design studios, like Porsche Design and I think one was Frog Design. The brief was to make the disposable camera more interesting – more artful, more enjoyable.

I worked with Ettore [Sottsass] on it and we were saying that the biggest problem with cameras was that they were all rectangular black boxes. Our idea was to do it like a bar of soap so it slipped into your pocket or your bag much more easily – to do away with all these hard edges and make it more ergonomic, personable, softer. That's the genesis of the idea.

In 1998 it was radical. We went to present it to Agfa in Leverkusen and as soon as we pulled it out, their jaws dropped. I had only come for the day but they changed my flight because they wanted to talk about it even more. The next week they sent us an official letter saying they had decided to go for the proposal. They were even planning to construct a new factory especially for this camera. For me it was really weird that this big company was moving so quickly on this project.

Then one day, we just got this letter saying, 'Due to circumstances with our mother company, Bayer ...' Basically Bayer had decided to either sell Agfa or pull out of it, I can't remember, so the project was abandoned, and from that point on Agfa just nosedived and disappeared almost. That was the start of the digital revolution.

Their marketing people had made the wrong decision. In fact, I remember being at the meeting and saying to them, 'Don't you think it's much more innovative to do a digital camera in this form rather than a film camera because film cameras aren't the future.' We were trying to persuade them to move forward rather than move backwards, I remember that quite vividly."Chris Redfern speaking to Justin McGuirk

Jerszy SeymourHairdryer for Moulinex"I work with Moulinex at the moment – I just met with the new design director there and he looked at this hairdryer I did for them and said, 'This will probably become the most sought-after, mass-produced collectible ever.'

Let's call it an anomaly of the modern world. It was a special request from them with a specific price point and market in mind, so in a sense changing their mind about it was a turnaround on their marketing decision. I designed it, we did the consumer test and it passed that. We did the safety testing and it passed that too and at this point it was getting expensive. Then the moulds were made and the packaging was designed. I don't know how many were actually produced in the end but at least a few thousand. And it was at this point that Moulinex turned around and said that they don't do bodycare products and so it was scrapped. I keep about 50 here in the studio and I give them away as gifts sometimes.

I'm not really sad that it's not in the shops. Of course I would have liked it to be, but for me the success of the project was to finish it. It is mass production at its fullest, so every decision you make is carefully scrutinised and every €0.001 makes a difference. It's an important education for every designer, whether they want to work with it or against it. You can call it my educational project."Jerszy Seymour speaking to Johanna Agerman

Boym partnersStrap chair for Vitra"It started in 1999 when experimentation with industrial reuse was still fresh. I stumbled upon this material – polypropylene strapping tape – on the street. We made a series of wooden frame furniture, using the strapping tape for the seats and tabletops, but without any intention to produce it industrially.

At the time we were doing two stores for Vitra, one in Chicago and one in New York, and we started to get to know Rolf Fehlbaum quite well. And he was interested in the chair, but at that time there was no Vitra Home and the company's focus was on office furniture. However, he decided to develop a prototype and we opted for a tubular steel frame instead of the wood. But there was a problem with the strapping and they sent the prototype to us to work on that, but at this point the project stalled and they didn't take it forward and nor did we – and then the momentum was gone.

We kept the prototype here for a while, but in one of our many office moves I looked at the thing and said, you know what? I think this should go. So even the prototype doesn't exist anymore.

I told Rolf off about this afterwards, that he shouldn't have given up, because right now it would have fitted in very well with their collection. But there is something beautiful about unrealised projects, about projects that aren't yet limited by the constraints of industrial production."Constantin Boym speaking to Johanna Agerman

FrontShade light"We had this idea to do a light with an object inside that would cast its own shadow, making a decoration on the surface. We were working with a manufacturer and they had already made the prototype. Everything was ready to be shown and it was installed at an exhibition at the Stockholm furniture fair in 2007. And then we got a phone call from the manufacturer saying that one of their senior designers – someone who was more famous than us – had seen the light and said that she had already had the same idea. She'd never produced it, and never even shown it to the manufacturer or anything but she said that she wanted to do it herself. So she used her power to tell them that they shouldn't do this product with us.

On the morning of the exhibition opening at the fair they came and took away our prototype. That was the power this designer had, and we just had to more or less agree on that because we couldn't fight it. She had already collaborated with them and was in their collection already, and we weren't. Of course we tried to make the point – who owns an idea that is hidden in someone else's desk drawer?

It was a big disappointment at the time because that was one of the first pieces we had that was going to be professionally produced. We didn't have that many products that were in actual production. It was a big drama at the time. It's interesting how people can claim somebody else's idea. But it was definitely nothing that she had that already existed or had been shown anywhere else. It was just more or less in her head.

Anyway, we're working on a variation of that idea now for Porro. We're changing it to make it different – it's a different manufacturer – because it feels like you can always improve an idea and work with it further. It's still not definitely going to happen though."Sofia Lagerkvist speaking to Justin McGuirk

Words

The Icon Team

The things that don't get made tell you almost as much about the way the design world works as the things that do get made

Branches is a new addition to London-based designer Simon Heijdens' digital plant series, shown by Gallery Libby Sellers at Design Miami/Basel in June.

Whereas Heijdens' earlier projects, Tree and Lightweeds, were wall projections, Branches is displayed on a canopy hanging from the ceiling, creating the sensation of looking up at branches from the ground. "I feel that the ceiling is often overlooked in interior design," says Heijdens, "and I wanted to play around with my projections as a potential light source."

Through bespoke software and motion sensors, Heijdens creates an interior landscape that changes according to the movement of people in the room and, via sensors outside the building, to the weather. Sun, wind and rain change the way the branches move, grow and wither. "Often people exist in static spaces that don't show a timeline, and I'm interested in bringing that dimension to a room," says Heijdens.

For Basel the designer created ceramic containers for the technical equipment. These cream-coloured monoliths work as a reminder of the branches' origin – not as organic matter, but as computer software. "Usually I hide away the projectors, programmers and sensors, but this time I wanted to deal with them in the context of the exhibition space," says Heijdens.

The projections are based on the branches of an elm tree.

Visitors can sit on found stools while viewing the projection (image: Gallery Libby Sellers)

Words

Johanna Agerman

Branches is displayed on a canopy hanging from the ceiling, creating the sensation of looking up at branches from the ground

Port light is British designer Alexander Taylor's first project for London's David Gill Galleries, shown at Design Miami/Basel in June. "I started by just modelling with card, playing around with the archetype of what a light can be, and turned the shade on its side," says Taylor.

The lamp, which comes as a floor and table version and evokes a ship's porthole, is made from sheets of aluminium rolled into tubes. The light source is hidden in the base of the lamp, and shines through a grill at the top of the stem. The simplicity of the rolled aluminium and the reference to archetypal forms is reminiscent of another of Taylor's projects, the Fold light for Established & Sons.

The Port light project is Taylor's first venture into limited-edition design. "Working with a gallery, you tap into a different kind of craftsmanship and you can realise projects that wouldn't be appropriate for retail," he says. "It's allowing me to pursue an arena where I can be more expressive."

The two lights shown in Basel are the first in a larger series that will be shown at the beginning of next year at David Gill Galleries in London.

The form of the light was inspired by portholes in ship hulls

Words

Johanna Agerman

The light source is hidden in the base of the lamp, and shines through a grill at the top of the stem

A key, a pen and a torch are all part of an exhibition looking at simplicity in design. Curated by design historian Nuno Coelho, the exhibition, titled New Simplicity, opens in a pop-up gallery in London at the end of July. It will feature work by a new generation of designers who make rationalism and functionalism the heart of their design philosophy. "It's a response to a current trend towards frugality and a return to basics in a climate of economic uncertainty," says Coelho.

The show will feature work by well-known minimalists such as Industrial Facility and Jasper Morrison as well as new pieces by recent graduates such as Thomas Wagner, Alex Hulme and Luka Stepan. "Quite a lot of the younger guys have actually studied under Sam Hecht [of Industrial Facility] at the Royal College of Art, so you can definitely see this relationship of master and student here."

The most interesting products in the show are the ones that have been specially commissioned to demonstrate how technology is simplifying form. "I wanted to show that this is not a stylistic exercise, hence the investigation of what 3D printing technology can do," says Coelho.

Nine new products will be on display, some of which are shown on this page. At a first glance they might seem quite ordinary, but many use rapid manufacturing technology in interesting ways. Luka Stepan's ballpoint pen, for example, is produced in one piece, with no more extra plastic bits or springs. Instead the pen itself is designed as a spring, with a slit on top where the replaceable ink cartridge can be inserted. Oscar Diaz's keys and key chain are also genially simple, making a permanent scan of your keys and supplying them attached to each other Swiss-army knife style. And Alex Hulme's self-assembly torch is so simple that a kid could put it together.

This SAS Royal Copenhagen hotel room is a portal to the past – stopped in time, preserved for posterity while everything around it is changing, writes Johanna Agerman

For €655 a night, you can stay in room 606 at the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen. It's the only room in the hotel that still looks as Danish architect Arne Jacobsen intended when the hotel opened in July 1960. It's a portal to the past, a room that has stopped in time, preserved for posterity while everything around it is changing.

The SAS Royal Hotel is the first design hotel ever built. Many of its by-products, such as the Egg and Swan chairs, still furnish corporate lobbies the world over.

Airline terminal in a downtown hotel

The form of the hotel itself, a kind of identikit internationalism, became a global phenomenon for the growing number of hotel chains responding to the needs of the new tourist class of the 1960s. It was the first hotel built by the Scandinavian Airlines System (a merger between the national airlines of Denmark, Norway and Sweden), and its purpose was to serve as an international style gateway to Scandinavia, predominantly for the growing number of American tourists travelling across the Atlantic on the new long-range DC-8 jets. For the first time in Europe, the SAS Royal incorporated an airline terminal in a downtown hotel.

A shuttle service brought the well-heeled travellers directly from the airline terminal's cocktail lounge to Kastrup airport, 20km to the south, in less than 20 minutes.

Gesamtkunstwerk on a very large scale

Jacobsen was the man charged with realising the airline's vision for this grand hotel for the jet age. He received the commission in 1955, at the peak of his career. His solution for the troublesome triangular plot of land just by the city's central station was two boxes, one lying down and the other balancing, 18 storeys tall, on top.

There was the customary parochial uproar at this behemoth of modernism, although Jacobsen managed a graceful, almost translucent tower covered in a reflective grey-green glass. Most days the surface of the building reflects the clouds and the sky, camouflaging the tower that still punctuates the Copenhagen skyline, which even now is predominantly horizontal.

However, Jacobsen's design of the building was just the start. The SAS Royal Hotel was a gesamtkunstwerk (total artwork) on a very large scale – 22 storeys in fact, from the state-of-the-art underground service station and car park to the hotel manager's private apartment on the top floor.

Wood panelling and hand-painted crockery

He designed everything from the furniture to the aluminium mullions for the glass curtain walls, adding his touches to the carpets, curtains, door handles, wine glasses, cutlery, ashtrays and hotel signage system along the way. It set up an indelible association: Denmark was modern design was Arne Jacobsen. But as well as being a towering monument to Jacobsen's talents as an architect and designer, it was a homage to the craft traditions of Denmark. And this was the charm of the building: despite its hypermodern look, it was still very much hand-crafted, from the wood panelling in the bedrooms to the hand-painted crockery from Royal Copenhagen in the restaurant.

But only a few years after the opening, a new management team started changing the hotel for customers' increasing desire for comfort. The now-collectible AJA flatware in stainless steel, coated in silver plate, was the first Jacobsen design to go, replaced by sturdier pieces (although it was chosen by Stanley Kubrick for props in 2001: A Space Odyssey). In some ways the changes are a testament to how poorly modernism sometimes worked in practice.

The rigidity of the scheme, from the wall-mounted tables and beds to the modular boxes that made up each hotel room (the tower was constructed from reinforced concrete), hasn't withstood pressure from changing tastes.

An oasis of an era long gone

The stylistic assault on this modernist masterwork is now complete. Over the 50 years that the SAS Royal Hotel (now the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel) has stood proud on Hammerichsgade, it has slowly transformed from a uniquely realised palace of the jet age to a hotel that is literally a shell of its former self. Jacobsen's carefully executed interiors have been replaced by the kind of blandness that is the downside of the modern movement – ironically, the very forces Jacobsen helped to unleash.

It's now the stuff of what French theorist Marc Augé writes about in his 1995 book Non-Places – faceless spaces of transience. And within this shell, room 606 is the last outpost of Jacobsen's vision for the SAS Royal Hotel, an oasis of an era long gone.

While the camera is clicking away Philippe Nigro and Michele de Lucchi are laughing. It's the kind of relaxed and spontaneous laughter that comes from a long-term friendship. For a moment they seem completely unaware that there are four people watching from behind the camera. Their relationship is one of a dying breed in the design industry – that of apprentice and master.

Nigro looks a little tired, but then again the French designer has been working round the clock for years now. On top of his full-time job with Michele De Lucchi, one of the maestri of Italian design, he has pursued a freelance career on evenings and weekends, working for the likes of Ligne Roset, Sintesi and Skitsch. In many ways Nigro is an anomaly. While other designers would scarper at the first whiff of personal success, Nigro has been biding his time for eleven years. Only now is he thinking of leaving his mentor behind.

So it's only natural that he should be suffering some separation anxiety. "If I were to start my own practice," says the 35-year old solemnly, "I wouldn't see all these projects, the architecture, the graphics, all the people." The decade he has spent with De Lucchi has shaped him as a designer. "I've discovered a lot working with Michele – all the faces of the design industry: architecture, furniture, interiors." The world outside the five-storey office on Via Varese in Milan, is a jungle of uncertainty in comparison.

We meet in the workshop of Michele De Lucchi's studio. It's a state-of-the-art woodwork room with all manner of woodcutting and planing contraptions, like a dad's garden shed on steroids. This is the birthplace for much of their work together and it has a warm, somewhat sweaty, air of productivity and anticipation. For now the machines are quiet and completely still. It's at the end of the working day and the eve of the opening of the Milan furniture fair, where both of them are showing a handful of new products – some that they have worked on together, some separately.

These days, the younger designer's work gets more attention. Which is ironic, because some of Nigro's most celebrated pieces to date, such as the jigsaw-like Confluences sofa for Ligne Roset and the genius two-in-one Twin chair for VIA, have come about in his spare time. "It's tiring," says Nigro. "When you work all the time it is difficult to define this frontier between home and work, it doesn't exist at the moment."

De Lucchi, however, doesn't mind his protégé moonlighting. "I'm always asking my collaborators to work for themselves," says De Lucchi. "But not everyone does. Out of the 42 people we have in the studio there are only three that do things for themselves. This profession is something that you have to be fully dedicated to." Nigro later reveals that De Lucchi practices as he preaches. Apparently he works all the time, spending his weekends in this workshop, making his wooden models of imaginary houses – they work both as evocative and beautiful sculptures and as sketches for other projects.

Michele De Lucchi's beard and round, horn-rimmed glasses make him look older than his 60 years. He was the last design director for Olivetti before it mutated into a communications company in the early 2000s. He set up Memphis with Ettore Sottsass, Martine Bedin, Aldo Cibic, Matteo Thun and Marco Zanini, and admits: "Memphis was a catastrophe, it wasn't successful at all. It was very influential, it was distributed all over the world and the Memphis idea was very famous but in terms of commercial success ..." De Lucchi puts his thumb and index finger together to form a zero. He set up his own studio in the 1980s and nowadays the architectural projects take up most of its capacity; Nigro is one of only three dedicated product designers on the staff. When they speak, and De Lucchi does most of the talking, they seem completely in tune with one another. At times De Lucchi seems almost fatherly and Nigro listens intently.

It was once common for designers to go to Milan to cultivate their trade under the tutelage of an older generation. It was a natural stop on the way for Patricia Urquiola, who apprenticed with both Castiglioni and Magistretti, and for James Irvine who worked with Sottsass. But this is rare nowadays, the idea of it a little dated. A decade fixated on limited-edition design pieces and design-art has made it easier for young designers to find sources of revenue and practise on their own. Nigro then, is subscribing to a slightly old-fashioned way of working, one which isn't entirely in tune with his contemporaries.

Lancelot cabinet for Decastelli, 2010, Philippe Nigro

After eleven years with De Lucchi, where does Nigro's own identity as a designer begin? "It's difficult not to be influenced by Michele because he has such a strong personality and style," says Nigro as we walk through the studio. In stark contrast to De Lucchi, Nigro has a very quiet, almost timid way about him. You get the feeling that Nigro isn't interested in cultivating a flamboyant personality for the sake of publicity – maybe he finds it difficult to move on because he lacks an instinct for commercial success. "I'm not interested in being a design protagonist," he says in his slow French drawl. "I'm not interested in being in the spotlight. To produce good design and to be proud of what I do, that's the most important to me."

Even this late at night the office is full of people busy with installing an exhibition for the Produzione Privata collection in the entrance lobby. It's a minimal collection, using almost exclusively wood and blown glass, that De Lucchi has been producing with craftsmen since the early 1990s. All of the pieces are simply constructed without screws or fittings to ruin the clean lines. It's almost Shaker in style.

The same pared-down approach to design can be found in Nigro's work. Many of his pieces seem almost childish in their simplicity, like the Ligne Roset sofa, which is a huddle of foam seats slotted together like a giant jigsaw. Other pieces, like the Cross-Unit shelving, is reminiscent of the steel rods from a Meccano set. Maybe because De Lucchi is so passionate about glass and wood, Nigro seems to avoid these materials in his own work. He favours metal and upholstery and when using wood, he disguises it. The Twin chair has a "skin" of metal that can be lifted off it to create another chair. "It's difficult, because I bring a lot of myself into the projects with Michele," says Nigro. "So it's sometimes difficult to work out my own personality." But he admits that there is an altogether different pleasure in seeing his own designs in production. "It's my big satisfaction because I know I did it all on my own."

So what does De Lucchi make of his protégé's work? "Philippe's design is too idealistic," he says as we sit down at his big, wooden desk on the top floor of the building. "He believes in good ideas too much. In my experience I know that good ideas are not necessarily good products, and vice versa. And good products are not necessarily good design. This is part of the paradox of the market." It might seem like a truism, but in an age where a new generation of designers seem intent on setting up on their own as soon as they have a design in production, it's a healthy reminder that it's not always easy to survive. "The market is overwhelming everything, designers are part of the market," continues De Lucchi. "We are chosen and rejected as products so we have to live inside this system – it is not so bad in some ways. It can be badly interpreted but this is the world, we are not walking on the green grass never touched by anybody." Diversifying has been De Lucchi's way of surviving the market and at 60 he is as in demand as 20 years ago, fresh out of Memphis "failure". The five-storey studio and 42 employees is testament to his success.

Twin chair, VIA, 2010, Philippe Nigro

In their master-apprentice relationship it's obvious that Nigro is keen to absorb all the lessons that De Lucchi can teach him in order to safeguard his own trajectory to success. Now the only problem, says Nigro, is that "Michele lets me be so free that it's difficult to leave."

Daphna IsaacsThe Design Invertuals exhibition, a collection of Dutch designers' work, was a repeat of an event in Eindhoven last October, but we were happy to be reunited with Dutch designers Daphna Isaacs and Laurens Manders' beautiful lighting pieces. Their name Taffelstukken doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but they are a likeable bunch of lights made from porcelain and oak with pretty details such as nuts, bolts and wingnuts. They are a take on the traditional table centrepiece, providing a container for objects or food with the lamp highlighting the content.

Established & SonsThere was a somewhat sombre feel to Established & Sons' display. The new pieces were offered on large white plinths without any fuss. Stefan Diez's stackable shelving New Order in powder-coated aluminium represented this pared-down approach very well, while Konstantin Grcic's Crash armchair was a mystery. Its upholstered seat resembles a deflated beanbag. It was good to see Martino Gamper working on production pieces (see Magis overleaf) and his Sessel bentwood chair was a one of the strongest pieces, working particularly well when the wood was stained in two colours. Established & Sons also launched Estd, a range of less expensive pieces such as the Spin table on mismatched wheels, already available to buy online. It's a departure for the company in two ways: first, the designers of the pieces aren't revealed and second, it's an attempt at reaching a larger audience.

MoooiMoooi opened a permanent showroom in Zona Tortona during the fair, a minimalist space in glass and concrete by Italian architect Matteo Thun. Arihiro Miyake's Miyake light looked great in it. The lamp is set on a multifaceted concrete base which allows the user to angle the light any direction they wish simply by rolling the base around. In three different sizes, the smaller desk light seemed to work best in terms of proportions.

Wästberg and SödraLast year, Claesson Koivisto Rune produced a stackable chair in pulp for pulp manufacturer Södra; this year it repeated the experiment, working to create a task light. The W101 lamp is now in production with Swedish lighting manufacturer Wästberg and it's a little engineering marvel. It's moulded out of pulp and stands on a metal base. The electrical wiring is integrated into the arm of the design and the lightsource is an LED.

Words

Johanna Agerman and Anna Bates

Established & Sons also launched Estd, a range of less expensive pieces such as the Spin table on mismatched wheels, already available to buy online

E15 (top image)Last year, we were very excited about Stefan Diez's CH04 Houdini chair for German manufacturer E15. It was made by hand-stretching plywood around a wooden ring to form the back and seat. The light material and seemingly simple construction made it appear origami-like, yet it was a surprisingly sturdy piece of furniture. This year, E15 tried to build on that success by expanding the collection to include a stool, two types of sofas, two types of lounge chairs and a pouf. The EC03 Eugene lounge chair is probably the best example of how the series has expanded. The high-back armchair gently hugs the sitter and its seat is covered with a modest cushion. It's like an armchair for monks.

OffecctLuca Nichetto was showing work all over Milan but his best piece was for Sweden's Offecct at the Fiera. His Robo chair is an interesting take on flatpacking. All the parts of the moulded ash frame fit into a 50 x 50 x 20cm box and it's easily assembled by slotting the pieces together through the connecting steel joints. The result feels strangely out if date, but then the inspiration came from a Björk music video from the 1990s.

KällemoSure, the Pinocchio chair is far from elegant, but nevertheless it has a charm that is difficult to resist, especially in this children's version. Designed by Swedish designer Mats Theselius for the small Swedish firm Källemo, the chair is produced in solid birch with a linoleum covered seat. The chubby, cylindrical legs are joined at the top by rectangular pieces of wood that jut out at the back to support the backrest, equally simply constructed.

Branca"It was a labour of love," says Industrial Facility's Sam Hecht about the Branca chair, the second product released by Italian manufacturer Mattiazzi. Branca is in fact Industrial Facility's first chair and the technique of making it was very different from its previous projects. Matiazzi uses a combination of robotic CNC milling and handcraft processes to turn the legs and backrest of the chair, which are joined together by almost invisible joints while the seat seems to float above the base. It is far away from the mass production pieces that Industrial Facility normally work on. The chair we saw at Milan was stained a beautiful green hue, but there are no pictures of that version yet.

MagisThe strongest pieces in Magis' new collection was a series of metal chairs by Tom Dixon and Martino Gamper. Gamper's Vignia chair is his first collaboration with Magis and it seems like a clear departure for the manufacturer. It's like a minimal take on a traditional wrought-iron garden chair where the metal wire swirls around to form the legs and back rest. In contrast, the seat is made from removable injection-moulded plastic. For Gamper, who mostly works in wood, the experience of working in metal was new "but I really enjoyed the process," he says.

Studio JujuThere's something about these incredibly tactile fabric and beech stools that pulls at our heart-strings. Singaporean duo Studio Juju obviously expects this reaction: the stools are called Bambi, and their splayed legs certainly bear a resemblance to the big-eyed deer's legs-on-ice moment. But the stools aren't just cuteness: not only does the backrest neatly double as a handle, it also seamlessly punches through the seat to provide the back legs.

Delphine FreyECAL graduate Delphine Frey's final college piece was a magazine cover star, so we arrived at the designer's stand at Salone Satellite with expectations. Thankfully, they were met – we took to Frey's storage boxes Woody Wood Pleat (despite their name). The flat surface of the wooden doors slowly blends into undulating ripples in the material, making it look like it's made out of metal. And it's not just decorative, the ripples also work as the handle.

PostfossilDefinitely the neatest thing we saw in Milan, Swiss designer Anna Blattert's Valet coat rack comprises two lengths of joined bentwood. Folded up Valet takes up no space at all, but swung open, the two rails provide enough room to hang a whole wardrobe of clothes. It's such a lovely, simple idea we can't believe it isn't already mainstream. Blattert exhibited at Salone Satellite with young design collective Postfossil.

Matthias RiesPlus One is a parasite shelf made out of bent plywood. It attaches to any existing bookshelf with a clever U-shaped metal hook dressed in a knitted sock (to avoid scratching surfaces). You would need a few to make any real difference to shelving space, but it's a clever way of getting some temporary storage without investing in a brand new system. Much of Berlin-based designer Matthias Ries' work at Satellite was preoccupied with storage solutions, but this was by far the smallest and cleverest.

Words

Johanna Agerman and Anna Bates

The flat surface of the wooden doors slowly blends into undulating ripples in the material, making it look like it's made out of metal

A volcanic ash cloud stole the show in Milan. But then again it wasn't difficult for a natural phenomenon to step into the limelight at the Milan furniture fair as it was a year dominated by safe launches. The daring and inventiveness we predicted that the recession would bring didn't come to fruition this year either.

Instead, the Italian maestri were rolled out to give a solid and reliable feel to the event. Vitra launched a flexible and cosy sofa system by Antonio Citterio, Artek put Enzo Mari's Sedia 1 chair from the 1974 Autoprogettazione series into production, Castiglione's lovely church models were on display at De Padvoa and Alessandro Mendini curated a show at the Triennale containing 700 seemingly random objects answering the question, "What is Italian design?"

Elsewhere manufacturers invested in expanding on series of already successful products. The Bouroullecs added a stool to their Steelwood collection for Magis, and Stefan Diez presented a whole seating collection based on last year's success story: the Houdini chair for E15. This massive expansion doesn't include a kitchen sink, but it does have everything else. Maarten Baas didn't launch anything new – instead he opted for making a 99 cent iPhone app of his Analog Digital Clock from last year. Although it makes sense to build on an existing concept after much research and experimentation has gone into creating the original product, it was still symptomatic of a year of launches that seemed to value safety over daring.

The surprise element of Milan this year was Wallpaper*'s Handmade exhibition in the Brioni mansion. Expecting self-indulgence and backslapping, we walked away impressed by the range and quality of the products presented. Wallpaper* teamed up designers with manufacturers, resulting in successful collaborations such as Gitta Gschwendtner and kitchen manufacturer Schiffini on a kitchen island. What happens next remains a mystery though.

The emergence of Lambrate as a new design district was the metaphorical silver lining to a week dominated by a looming cloud. Here was the energy and atmosphere of Zona Tortona of old, before it went corporate. The work on show was of a consistently high standard. We can see this area flourishing next year but hopefully it will stay young and independent. Because this is what the Milan furniture fair needs more of right now – the young and the daring.

Words

Johanna Agerman and Anna Bates

The Italian maestri were rolled out to give a solid and reliable feel to the event

M'Afrique is a furniture collection for the Italian brand Moroso, produced with the help of traditional craftsmen in Senegal. The brainchild of Patrizia Moroso, the collection launched at last year's Milan furniture fair and is now set to expand with these chairs by Senegalese interior designer Dominique Petot. "The intention is to stay stable, to keep 20 to 25 people working on the collection in Senegal all the time," says Moroso.

The first collection included pieces by Tord Boontje, Patricia Urquiola, Bibi Seck and Ayse Birsel, who were all asked to take inspiration from Senegalese weaving craft to come up with an idea for a new outdoor piece. Petot's chairs are in a similar vein and use the same techniques. The chairs are made by producing a metal frame around which the craftsmen weave a seat, armrests and back. The sun- and waterproof plastic is the same material used for the fishing nets that can been seen in multicoloured mountains on Senegal's beaches. "But they don't produce this material locally," says Moroso. "It comes from Japan and sometimes, the cheaper variety, from China."

Each piece is slightly different in terms of shape and pattern. It is up to the craftsmen themselves to decide what colours they want to produce the chair in, leaving the creative process open-ended.

"The individuality of the piece is the sign of the handmade, it's part of the beauty of the object," says Moroso.

Contrary to popular belief, these pieces are relatively expensive to produce as it's a labour-intensive process – the prototype for the very first chair by Tord Boontje took ten days to make. "You can't expect the uniformity and speed that we are used to with European manufacturing," says Moroso. "But if you are happy with that you can have a more interesting project, something with a difference."

The Iris chair by Dominique Petot

Words

Johanna Agerman

The chairs are made by producing a metal frame around which the craftsmen weave a seat, armrests and back

There are hardly any bicycles left in Beijing. Instead, the four-lane roads that cut through the fabric of the city are filled with shiny new automobiles. There are now over four million cars in the city and it doesn't leave a lot of room for pedal pushers. As a result, Beijing has a complicated relationship to air. During the Olympics, many athletes tried not to stay in the city for too long for the fear of breathing in pollution. During the warmer months, the damp climate combined with the fumes from cars and coal-fired power plants creates a dense white fog cloaking the city in a lethal mystery.

It is interesting, then, that the Feelings Are Facts installation at the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (UCCA) is dominated by smoke and not much else. It's a gut-wrenching, thick smoke like the type you used to get in old-school discos, only this one is on a continuous spray so you can only take dainty little breaths unless you want to collapse in an eye-popping coughing attack.

The product of a collaboration between the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson and Beijing-based architect Ma Yansong of MAD studio, Feelings Are Facts is a smoke chamber constructed within one of the UCCA galleries. It measures about 60m by 20m and has a gently sloping floor that gradually becomes steeper at one end. It is impossible to see this because all you can make out is smoke lit up by multi-coloured fluorescent lights (heightening the morbid disco experience) and occasionally the shadowy figures of fellow gallery-goers. The picture is an uneasy one, as smoke almost always means bad news – the gas chambers of the Holocaust, the streets of Halabja, a house on fire, ash clouds from Icelandic volcanoes. So here the Beijing art scene has its very own smoke chamber, but what are Ma and Eliasson trying to kill off exactly?

The smoke-filled room brings to mind a similarly immersive artwork, Antony Gormley's Blind Light: a glass chamber filled with steam that he showed in 2007 at the Hayward in London. But while Gormley's piece was partly voyeuristic – the glassed walls made it possible to look in, occasionally glimpsing hands pressed against the wall, desperately trying to find their way out – this installation has no such possibility for overview. And while the harsh, white light of Gormley's installation and the roles of the visitors as observer and observed brought a much darker aspect to his work, Eliasson and Ma's collaborative efforts seem somewhat happier, but only on the surface perhaps.

In a society where the government keeps a tight hold on information about everything from natural disasters to tearing down old neighbourhoods to pollution levels, it is easy to take on an air of apathy, blindly being led by the hand without questioning your position or course. In Feelings Are Facts the same goes. The gently sloping floor gets steeper and steeper towards one end of the room. Because I have blind faith that the artistic intention isn't to hurt me, I carelessly continue walking until I find myself at such a steep angle that I can't keep my balance any more. I fall with a screech. If I had trusted my feelings I wouldn't have taken those last few steps.

Feelings Are Facts is asking a lot of the visitor both physically and mentally. Physically, faced with this challenge of navigating a smoke-filled room, insecurity takes hold and you move through the space as if wearing a blindfold, fumbling with your hands in the air in front of you. Rarely has an empty room of such generous proportions felt so claustrophobic. Mentally, the installation forces you to insert your own meaning into the space and authorship of the work.

Dematerialisation plays a large role in both Eliasson and Ma's individual projects (Eliasson's preoccupation with recreating natural phenomena; Ma by questioning the nuts and bolts of architecture by creating light and fluid buildings, such as the bulbous and shiny Hutong Bubble, icon 077). In Feelings Are Facts this has been taken to its extreme. There is literally nothing to see, or what there is to see (smoke and light) is so ephemeral that it's impossible to quantify. Only feelings remain. The installation could be seen as yet another fun-loving art jamboree where children can play and parents listen from a safe distance, lattes in hand (and lattes are just as prevalent in Beijing as anywhere else), but the intensity of this space makes relaxation difficult. Eliasson and Ma are asking for the audience's involvement on another level, not just as coolly observant but as emotionally engaged. Wake up. Feel something, do something!

Feeling Are Facts is at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, until 20 June

Words

Johanna Agerman

Smoke almost always means bad news - the gas chambers of the Holocaust, the streets of Halabja, a house on fire, ash clouds from Icelandic volcanoes. So here the Beijing art scene has its very own smoke chamber, but what are Ma and Eliasson trying to kill off exactly?

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. The incessant ticking of the wall clock fills the Paris apartment every time the conversation goes quiet, as if it’s reminding Inga Sempé that time is running out.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. The incessant ticking of the wall clock fills the Paris apartment every time the conversation goes quiet, as if it's reminding Inga Sempé that time is running out. "It is driving Eléonore crazy," says Sempé, referring to her suffering assistant. "She has even tried to put old chewing gum in it to shut it up."

The Milan furniture fair is less than a month away and the Parisian designer still hasn't finished her wall clock for French manufacturer Moustache. For some reason the design doesn't seem to be coming together. The slightly distorted circular shape isn't quite right and Sempé is experimenting with a pattern for the pendulum, which shows through a cut-out at six o'clock. "I have to be happy with the end result because otherwise I don't want to present it," says Sempé, but she doesn't seem stressed. Instead she carelessly chats the afternoon away as if she has all the time in the world, but it's all a deception. "In fact I'm hyper stressed but I learned a long time ago to look calm," says Sempé in her deadpan fashion. "I think I deserve an Oscar, but I don't sleep at night, all the projects come into my mind when I try to sleep."

Inga Sempé is a designer of extraordinary sensibility. She adds feeling to the driest objects, such as clocks and wall lights, creating visual poetry along the way. Take the totemic Brosse shelves for Edra, from 2003, where the simplest of aluminium structures is given a fringe of the kind of bristles that brooms have, making an almost mythical object where your belongings can hide. Or the recent W103 task light for Wästberg with its elegant inverted clamp held in place by the stem itself. Her pieces are pleasurable to look at without trying to be decorative; they solve problems in an inventive and highly lyrical way. She is like a detective of the everyday, studying and lifting details from the world around her and inserting them into her work.

Inga Sempé has been touted as the next big thing for almost a decade (she set up her own practice in 2000 after working for Marc Newson and Andrée Putman), but curiously her name isn't as widely recognised as those of her contemporaries the Bouroullecs and Konstantin Grcic. In fact, Sempé seems to actively work against that kind of recognition. She doesn't have a PR machine working for her, she answers her own emails and picks up the phone herself. It doesn't interest her to be a name or a face of design, she doesn't care about being in museum collections. "My aim was always to have my objects in the shops, to be part of the movement of life, not in museums," says Sempé. "Design in this country is not connected to quality of life but the personality of designers. It's seeing design in a fake way, it's closer to haute couture." So can Inga Sempé put them straight?

We have just finished lunch at the neighbourhood restaurant. Sempé has kept her coat and scarf on throughout and sits at an angle that doesn't make her look altogether comfortable, but the conversation flows easily and often strays into personal territory (Sempé loves real life stories and reads a lot of autobiographies in her spare time). The restaurant is tiny with rickety tables and chairs. Old wine bottles line the walls. It has a rough and undesigned quality which goes well with Sempé's preoccupation with the "everyday". She studies it with an insatiable appetite – on the street where she lives, in hardware stores. On the way back to her studio she points out the dream location for her practice – a corner shop currently occupied by a cobbler. "I really like daily life, that's why I would like to have a studio on the street," muses Sempe. "You open it on Monday morning and close it on Friday evening, like life in a Jacques Demy film. I like to be like everybody else."

Sempé likes to de-dramatise the design profession. It's as if her reason for being a designer is to break down the pedestals we often put them on. "I'm more like a doctor's secretary when I work," she says, describing just how normal her day to day is. But there is nothing doctor-like about her practice; if there once was, it's now more like a doctor's surgery gone bad. Her studio is a mess of miniature models, scraps of paper, dusty filing cabinets and mismatched furniture. It's located in the living room of her apartment, which is almost completely empty of design. There is a dead and undecorated Christmas tree in one corner (it's March), bare light bulbs hang from stiff wires in the ceiling and a baby stroller blocks the hallway. "I don't like to buy design objects," explains Inga. "I prefer the flea market. I have a huge visual culture from the flea market but I have a really low culture of knowing names of designers and companies."

As her home is the setting in which most of her objects are created it's tempting to make a connection between that and the fact that her designs often take the mundane materials of the every day as their starting point. Paper in the case of the Vapeur lamp for Moustache; simple cotton fabric for the Armoire Suple cabinet, also for Moustache; a duvet for the Ruché sofa for French furniture manufacturer Ligne Roset. The pleated texture of her first two designs for Moustache made them the stand-out pieces at its debut in Milan last year.

Again, Sempé managed to solve a problem in an extraordinarily beautiful way. In the case of both Vapeur and Armoire Suple, pleats were the solution to flat-packing pieces in order to make them easier and cheaper to produce and to transport. But they have none of the formulaic look of flatpacks. Unfolded, the pieces take on unexpected and beautiful shapes. "I love the mechanic quality of pleats and I'm fascinated by how pleats completely transform a material and change its shape and texture," says Sempé. "It has nothing to do with fashion, even if many people want to interpret it in that way."

The samples for the quilted texture of the Ruché sofa are scattered all over the studio and Sempé is still studying them with interest. It reminds me of seeing her a couple of months earlier at the Ligne Roset stand at Parisian furniture fair Maison & Objet. Then she was visibly relieved that the end result and colour had come out almost like she envisaged it. "I'm not too disappointed," she says, sinking into the softness of the quilted fabric. It's possibly this critical response that has earned her a reputation as a "difficult" designer, but that doesn't bother her in the least. "You shouldn't be afraid of being regarded as a pain in the arse," says Sempé. "Otherwise you just get swallowed up by manufacturers and PRs." There is certainly a difficult streak to Sempé. It's hard to work her out. She can come out with something really provocative while looking demure, she isn't bothered by long silences and the informal chattiness over lunch is now replaced by a certain awkwardness. It's difficult to talk to Sempé without feeling self-conscious. "But I'm afraid that I'm not as difficult as I should be. I'm still an angel at work in comparison to how I am in my personal life," she says.

W103 task light for Wästberg

Because of the way that Sempé has set up her studio, her personal life seeps into her daily work. It is, for example, impossible to avoid talking about Sempé's role as a mother, something that otherwise seldom comes up in interviews. As she clears a chair for me to sit on her two-year old daughter comes in for a quick cuddle and no doubt to check on the foreign visitor. Sempé's 12-year old son is in school around the corner. "It's easy to have them around, because I'm easily distracted anyway," says Sempé.

This afternoon the work is interrupted by a phone call from her son's school. "They would like me to come in and see them," she says. While she is very open about her children, she doesn't even mention her partner, Ronan Bouroullec. The only sign of him here is the Steelwood chair the Bouroullecs designed for Magis next to her desk and a magnet with his name on it, stuck to the shade of a black Ikea task light.

So how does she get the job done in this domestic setting and what does it involve exactly? In-depth product research is the first step. "Everything looks very boring to me until you start to research around it," says Sempé. "It's normally not the object that is boring but the framework around it." She means the process of making it, of reaching the end result. Even if designing by nature is a collaborative effort, with manufacturers, marketeers and the end user, Sempé sees designing as a solitary pursuit. "I don't know if I would be happy working with so many people all the time." In the studio, she has two assistants helping her, she calls them her children and they produce all her miniature models. "Before we got the paper for the Vapeur lamp, Eléonore folded paper all day long," says Sempé.

Sempé doesn't make models anymore and she only draws by hand when she absolutely has to. "There is nothing pleasurable about drawing for me," says Sempé. Possibly it's the side effect of having artist parents (the famous illustrator JJ Sempé and children's book illustrator Mette Ivers-Sempé) that has made it more of a chore than relaxation. "I only use it as a means of explaining an idea, as a means of communication." Her artistic parents had very little to do with her decision to become a designer. "It's funny because my parents must have been part of one of the most cultured communities in the world and still none of them seemed to connect the objects surrounding us to designers. It was as if they had always been there – spoons and bugs in the same drawer."

However, this way of looking at design seems to influence her view of her profession. Her work as a designer is an effort to remove the boundaries between the designer and the public, even to the extent that she wants her studio at street level. So is there an element of wanting to educate people about design and the work of a designer? "Oh no!" exclaims Sempé. "I'm doing this only for myself."

Moët armchair for Ligne Roset, 2007

Digital and Analogue clock for VIA, 2000

Double Access shelves for David Design, 2008

Suitcase in three parts for VIA, 2007

Prototypes of the Vapeur lamp for moustache

Image

Ola Rindal

Words

Johanna Agerman

Sempé likes to de-dramatise the design profession. It's as if her reason for being a designer is to break down the pedestals we often out them on

John Harrison takes everyday objects and tweaks them to be more useful. It's a clever second look at the life of mass-manufactured products

In the hands of the user all objects have the potential to do more than one thing, even if it's not the manufacturer's intention. Keys become bottle openers, boxes become seats, railings become coat hooks. It's called affordance, and we all do it. But for London-based designer Jon Harrison it has become an obsession to articulate an object's affordance through design.

It all started when Harrison studied at the Royal College of Art. "We were asked to create an object with two functions, but I thought of loads and decided to make them all," says Harrison. The process resulted in such pieces as a torch-cum-candle holder, a paint brush with a handle that opens paint tins and an umbrella with its handle cut at an angle to make it easier to lean against the wall. "The purpose is to reduce the scanning of our environment," says Harrison. "If you have a paintbrush and paint tin you automatically look for something to open the tin with."

The fascination for realising affordances in everyday objects has continued since Harrison graduated from the Design Products course in 2008. The collection now has 30 pieces and is still growing. Some of them are doomed to become nothing more than a rough prototype, but others, Harrison thinks, have potential to be put into production. "The paintbrush for example could easily be injection moulded," he says.

Harrison's Dual Purpose collection ignores aesthetics, it's simply an attempt at individualising mass culture. "When I first started I made a half-hearted attempt at designing, like the lid of the make up jar (14), but I quickly realised that this wasn't the intention of the project," says Harrison. Instead, it was about modifying existing objects, "making it feel like I own the object and the idea".

Although the process of tinkering with objects to give them additional functions can be seen as a craft, for Harrison the process has also been a cerebral one. As psychologist James J Gibson observed in The Psychology of Affordance, all objects have the potential to be something other than they seem, but it's up to the user to find that function through intellectual deductions.

Image

Angela Moore

Words

Johanna Agerman

The process resulted in such pieces as a torch-cum-candle holder, a paint brush with a handle that opens paint tins and an umbrella with its handle cut at an angle to make it easier to lean against the wall

A rendering of Sony's space at the Officine Stendhal at Via Stendhal 35 in Zona Tortona. The space is designed by London-based studio BarberOsgerby and has been constructed from sound-absorbing cones to transform it into an anechoic chamber as a backdrop to Sony's new products

The Milan Furniture fair promises to be as vibrant as ever, although the recession is still likely to loom large. On the following pages is a sample of the events we're looking forward to (that we know about so far). But busy or not, the vita is far from dolce. With Silvio Berlusconi announcing a €300 million stimulus package last month, Cosmit president Carlo Guglielmi made no bones about the fact that a lot of Italian companies are going through hard times. "Do we need a Marshall plan to work out the crisis?" he asked. "No, our country doesn't need to be redesigned, but we need a lot of love and commitment."

CAPPELLINI

Last year the Poltrona Frau Group abandoned its vast and spotless space in Hall 12 at the Fiera for a warehouse in Zona Tortona, proving that the area is changing to become a stronghold for the more corporate design scene, pushing the younger and newer talent elsewhere. Cappellini is staying put this year and has some interesting launches in the pipeline. We are particularly excited to hear that it is working with London-based Raw-Edges, but the nature of the project had not been revealed at the time of going to press. We did however get a preview of New York designer Todd Bracher's insect-like tubular steel stool, Alodia (pictured opposite).Venue Via Savona 56

Alodia stool by Todd Bracher for Cappellini

MATTIAZZI

It was easy to miss the Italian manufacturer in the vast fairgrounds last year, so this year Mattiazzi is focusing on an exhibition in Zona Tortona instead. Creative director Nitzan Cohen (icon 077) has worked with London-based Industrial Facility on a CNC-milled solid wood chair with armrests (pictured) which will form the focus of the exhibition.Venue Via Voghera 8

Industrial Facility's chair for Mattiazzi

MOROSO

Moroso is sticking to the same designers it worked with last year. Front has designed an armchair inspired by the beaded seats for cars. It's meant to create a comfortable surface that stimulates circulation. Tokujin Yoshioka's Memory chair (pictured) has an ever-transforming design as it is created from a fabric made from recycled aluminium and is moulded into shape by its user.At its Milan store Moroso is celebrating Italian design with a large-scale installation by Francesco Simeti and Andrea Sala.Venue Hall 8, Stand C25/D24 (Fiera Rho); Moroso store: Via Pontaccio, 8

Tokujin Yoshioka's Memory chair for Moroso

Nacho Carbonell

Spazio Rossana Orlandi received last-minute funding to stage a large-scale exhibition of Nacho Carbonell's new work at the Spazio Gianfranco Ferré, by the Castello. The space is normally used for catwalk shows and will provide a grand backdrop for Carbonell's sculptural pieces. The show is called Diversity and will present a collection of 15 different chairs, made using Carbonell's trademark plant derivative raw materials.Venue Via Pontaccio 21

ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART

This year will be the first time that the new head of Design Products at the Royal College of Art, Tord Boontje, takes his students to Milan, so all eyes will be on their show. The exhibition is set up as a hotel with the designs responding to the functions of the different spaces. If you haven't yet seen last year's graduate and Brit Insurance Designs of the Year winner Min-Kyu Choi's foldable British plug, you have to come and check it out. Also look out for Felix de Pass' desk (pictured overleaf).VenueVia Privata Cletto Arrighi 16 (Ventura Lambrate)

Desk by Felix de Pass from the Royal College of Art

Words

Johanna Agerman

Cosmit president Carlo Guglielmi made no bones about the fact that a lot of Italian companies are going through hard times

A rendering of Sony's space at the Officine Stendhal at Via Stendhal 35 in Zona Tortona. The space is designed by London-based studio BarberOsgerby and has been constructed from sound-absorbing cones to transform it into an anechoic chamber as a backdrop to Sony's new products

SALONE SATELLITE

Every year the Satellite exhibition at the Fiera is a sure card for spotting new talent from all over the world and seeing products in the raw, before they are picked up and perfected by manufacturers. This year, the Satellite exhibition will be divided into five parts, to reflect the different continents (the Americas are lumped together and Antarctica isn't included this year). They all meet at a central square designed by five continental representatives: Cory Grosser represents the Americas, Paolo Ulian Europe, Charles O'Job Africa, Tonerico Inc Asia and Darcy Clarke Oceania.Venue Halls 22-24 (Fiera Rho)

SKITSCH

If you missed the launch of Skitsch last year, make sure to see the new store this time around. Straight after opening a new outlet in London's Brompton Design District, the Italian brand is on the offensive with over 50 new products launching in Milan. The new crop of designers includes London-based Peter Marigold, who will present a combined wardrobe and mirror "to enable people with small houses to give the impression of having grand furniture", Paris-based 5.5 Designers, who will present a kitsch lamp that mimics an open fire, and Venice-based Luca Nichetto who has designed a tubular steel and plywood chair (pictured).Venue Via Monte di Pietà 11

Alle chair by Luca Nichetto for Skitsch

SPAZIO ROSSANA ORLANDI

Orlandi's design gallery is everyone's favourite hang-out when in Milan. Its quiet courtyard and serene setting is a relief after a day of rushing around. Besides, the gallery is usually filled to the brim with interesting projects, from limited editions to mass production. This year the Campanas presents a collection of new vases in resin and natural fibers, ARTEK shows a new chair by Shigeru Ban and a shelving system by Naoto Fukasawa.Fukasawa will also present some new pieces for PlusMinusZero. The courtyard will house a number of outdoor projects such as Urban Buds by Gionata Gatto (pictured overleaf) and Giant Flower Pots by TAF.Venue Via Matteo Bandello 14

Urban Buds by Gionata Gatto is showing at Spazio Rosanna Orlandi

TOM DIXON

This year Tom Dixon's display is titled Industry and aims to transform the showroom into a factory, bringing the industrial process directly to the consumer.Three new products will launch: the Peg stackable chair, the Offcut bench and the Void lamp. However, it's not the furniture that's interesting this year but the collaboration with Philips. Together they have developed Flat lamp, a collection of OLED (organic light emitting diode) light bulbs expected to replace the conventional LED bulbs in the next few years. It comes in a strip, a square and a round shape.Venue Stand 12, Superstudio Piu, Via Tortona 27

Void Lamp by Tom Dixon

UNEXPECTED GUESTS: HOMES OF YESTERYEAR, DESIGN OF TODAY

If you fancy a break from all the bustle of the fair your ticket to the Fiera in Rho also gives you free entry to four of Milan's most famous villa museums. This year they have had a bit of a makeover with contemporary furniture being displayed alongside the historical interiors. The 1930s Villa Necchi Campiglio is a must-see, as is the morbidly gloomy Museo Bagatti Valsecchi from the 1880s, fashioned in a neo-Renaissance style.Venue Villa Necchi, Via Mozart 14; Museo Bagatti Valsecchi, Via Gesu 5

VENTURA LAMBRATE

Last year Zona Romana was the new area to visit, this year it's Ventura Lambrate, further to the east. Just like Zona Tortona it's an old industrial quarter that is currently enjoying some regeneration. Initiated by the Dutch company Organisation in Design, this is where you will see some of the most interesting new work, not yet picked up by manufacturers. The graduates from Design Academy Eindhoven are exhibiting here (Via Ventura 6) and so is Maarten Baas (Massimiano 25), guaranteeing a fair bit of footfall.Venue various spaces around Ventura Lambrate

NACHO CARBONELL, DIVERSITY

Spazio Rossana Orlandi received last-minute funding to stage a large-scale exhibition of Nacho Carbonell's new work at the Spazio Gianfranco Ferré, by the Castello. The space is normally used for catwalk shows and will provide a grand backdrop for Carbonell's sculptural pieces. The show is called Diversity and will present a collection of 15 different chairs, made using Carbonell's trademark plant derivative raw materials.Via Pontaccio 21

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Johanna Agerman

This year, the Satellite exhibition will be divided into five parts, to reflect the different continents (the Americas are lumped together and Antarctica isn't included this year)

Origami was the starting point for Masataka Matsumura's first womenswear collection for the Italian-Japanese fashion brand Giuliano Fujiwara. It launched at Milan fashion week in February.

The art of folding paper has inspired each garment to create unusual shapes. Big pleats and rough folds create jackets that look boxy and loosely follow the contours of the body.

Matsumura selected materials with a thick, robust quality and slightly stiff texture, such as wool crepe and leather, to enhance the sculptural look of the outer garments.

In contrast, the skirts and dresses are much more body conscious, wrapping tight around the body and using softer and more fluid fabrics.

The collection also features footwear, jewellery and bags that have the same roughness and simplicity as the garments. The shoes are unusual hooves of leather – Matsumura uses the same techniques of folding and pleating to create little "wings" around the heels. The result is strangely elegant and surprisingly wearable.

Giuliano Fujiwara was founded by Yoshiaki Fujiwara in 1986 and quickly became a cult menswear label. The first womenswear collection will be in stores this autumn.

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Johanna Agerman

The art of folding paper has inspired each garment to create unusual shapes

Inspired by the open pages of a book, Campaign decided to create bookshelves from pleated sheets of cardboard for the Foldaway bookshop at 10 Heddon Street. It's a simple but striking way of creating shelving and the whole point of the design is that it's temporary – it can easily be dismounted and recycled afterwards.

Pop up shops and temporary pavilions are everywhere these days, perpetuating a "new rough" aesthetic of cardboard and scrap material. Last summer, third-year architecture students at the University of Cambridge built the Cardboard Banquet pavilion, while earlier this month Carmody Groarke built a temporary restaurant for Bistrotheque on top of the Westfield shopping centre in Stratford, using materials borrowed from the mega-mall's construction site.

The Foldaway bookshop will be open for the duration of the London Festival of Architecture (until 4 July) and is stocked with specialist architecture titles from Riba Bookshops. To help visitors browse, there are several book recommendations by London-based architects and critics featured throughout the shop.

The space will also serve as a hub for the LFA in the centre of town, a stretch rather naffly dubbed "Nash Ramblas". Apart from book buying, visitors can also come for talks – we look forward to the How To Read event by the School of Life on 4 July.

The Alexandra Heritage Centre is the first public building in the township (image: Iwan Baan)

"I built a jungle gym out of steel," says South African architect Peter Rich about the Alexandra Heritage Centre, a community space in the infamous township of Alexandra – or Alex for short – outside Johannesburg.

Rich is referring to the structure of the centre, which is built with exposed red steel girders with walls of brick and multi-coloured polycarbonate. The building stretches across a central road in Alexandra, creating an observation bridge that gives a rare overview of the sprawling township.

"It has an ad-hoc aesthetic influenced by the surrounding buildings, but it's not trying to be patronising," says Rich. Seven years in the making, it has developed through careful consultations with the community and the heritage organisation that now looks after the history and preservation of Mandela's Yard, this particular area of the township. "It's a really good example of a bottom-up rather than top-down building," says Rich, referring to the involvement of the residents in the planning, designing and building of the complex, which is now 85 percent finished. Rich hopes the next stage, the completion of the commercial units on street level, will be ready before the World Cup starts in June.

"I wanted the building to have a civic quality at the same time as being integrated with the very domestic buildings surrounding it," says Rich, who spent a long time studying people's living patterns and how the inhabitants organised their own homes before suggesting a design for the centre. Delays caused by government bureaucracy have meant that the building was on hold for three years, but, surprisingly, not a single brick was stolen from the site. "That's proof of how successfully the community has been integrated into the making of the building and the care they show for it," says Rich.

Before this project, the only public space for the community to gather in the township was the street. The Alexandra Heritage Centre is a multi-functional space that serves as a venue for meetings, exhibitions and classes. Perhaps most importantly, it's a space where the older generation of inhabitants can tell their stories and record their memories of one of South Africa's most contested townships.

The building is made from steel girders, brick and polycarbonate (image: Iwan Baan)

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Johanna Agerman

The building stretches across a central road in Alexandra, creating an observation bridge that gives a rare overview of the sprawling township

The centre is a multi-functional space for the community (image: Iwan Baan)

These glasses cost five dollars to produce. They are designed by Fuseproject, which was commissioned by the Mexican government and lens manufacturer Augen. The challenge was to come up with a low-cost product for See Better To Learn Better, the children's charity helping poorer communities in Mexico.

The frames, made from a lightweight plastic called Grilamide, are split in two halves. This makes the process of inserting the lenses easier and cheaper than the more common heating method. It also makes customisation much easier, as the children can choose different colours for the top and bottom half.

In poorer areas of Mexico children with bad eyesight often can't afford glasses, which has an adverse affect on their education. A relatively simple initiative like the See Better To Learn Better charity, which hands out 400,000 pairs to these communities every year, is a big help. "It's a problem that has always being attacked on a similar basis – through distributing recycled glasses," says Yves Béhar, founder of San Francisco-based Fuseproject. "But the kids don't want to wear them. They have a sense of self and what they like and dislike, and what makes them feel great."

So Fuseproject had its work cut out in terms of meeting a strict budget and pleasing some very picky customers. Amazingly, they managed to produce glasses that were both cheaper and more desirable than the present option. "The first thing the directors of the charity did was to sit on the glasses," says Béhar. "It was to make sure that they were flexible and durable enough." Luckily, they didn't break.

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Johanna Agerman

This makes the process of inserting the lenses easier and cheaper than the more common heating method

"The paint was still drying," explains Petter Skogstad of his last-minute touches to his new collection of furniture a day before cramming the pieces into a van to go to Milan, where he showed his latest works at Salone Satellite two weeks ago.

The Norwegian designer is graduating from an MA in Industrial Design at Åkershus University College outside Oslo this spring but he already has big manufacturers like Cappellini, Danese and Moroso on his tail, with Patrizia Moroso and Giulio Cappellini both making personal appearances at his stand.

It's easy to see how manufacturers are seduced by the clean and professional lines of Skogstad's work - they all look ready for production. "We have one of the best workshops of any Norwegian design school," says Skogstad. "So I make all the prototypes myself."

Skogstad showed the Hay modular sofa, an extremely simple construction of upholstered cubes that creates a flexible seating system. It has already been picked up by Danish manufacturer Muuto. The slightly bulky Mint chair, made from cut-out steel, also got a lot of attention, as did the Disco suspended light with an integrated table. The Tilt desk lamp is probably the most elegant in the collection: it's a slender, red metal arm bent at a 90 degree angle with a disc-shaped foot and light source. The gently tilted full-length mirror also has a graceful touch with its stand made of solid ash.

Skogstad's best memory from his third appearance in the Satellite show was Cappellini's greeting: "Still making beautiful things, I see." "It makes it all worth it," says Skogstad.

Disco suspended lamp

Body mirror

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Johanna Agerman

The Norwegian designer is graduating from an MA in Industrial Design at Åkershus University College outside Oslo this spring